


Technicolor

by altairattorney



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Inspired by Fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 16:05:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8673790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altairattorney/pseuds/altairattorney
Summary: The first question Bill asks is whether colours are what he thinks they are: breathing, living beings, rich in flavor and difference. He is disappointed in the answer.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PengyChan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PengyChan/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Flat Dreams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6062122) by [PengyChan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PengyChan/pseuds/PengyChan). 



> I’m back to studying colorimetry, and it shows.
> 
> Flat Dreams is a truly special story to me; I witnessed its evolution from concept to massively popular story (as it should be), saw previews as it was written and even took part in brainstorming sessions. A long-due tribute to this brilliant fusion between the GF canon and the novella which most likely was Alex’s inspiration. Glad to deliver.

**Red**

The first question Bill asks is whether colours are what he thinks they are: breathing, living beings, rich in flavor and difference. He is disappointed in the answer. 

That the question is smart, or that Randall is impressed at its audacity, he couldn’t care less. Even the high of discovery is not enough to chase away a touch of bitterness. He believed he had it all figured out – he rarely gets things wrong.

If he _ever_ does, that is. There isn’t much evidence to the contrary so far.

Yet, he refuses to stop there. He chooses to do what he does best; he insists. Bill Cipher never rests until he gets his own way, even when dealing with the universe itself. 

In secret, he builds his own ideas about colours. He grabs the concept – this foreign idea – and chips away at its edges, swindling bits of truth out of the fabric of reality. 

Halfway in between dreams and testimony, he gives colours a character of their own. After all, they’ve got to be more than a caprice of light. And once the construct is complete, once the fascination with himself is over, Bill finally gets it.

He likes the warm, vibrant ones. The ones that stand out above all others, and set his eye on fire long after he got used to them.

He won’t ask – in some cases, he can’t – but he is sure everyone would agree.

**Green**

“Seriously, though, don’t you think they are beautiful?”

Nora’s whisper drips with fascination, and Bill would take his cue to joke about how _emotional_ women are if he weren’t sharing the sentiment.

“If you wanna know my favorite, you’re out of luck. We don’t have to choose one,” he lies.

Nora rolls her eye, but neither hides their amusement. She giggles just loudly enough to be heard – it is independent study hour in Randall’s back room, and she is far too polite to break the silence.

“I’m on to you, Bill. I’ll find out someday. No matter how long you’ve known, you choose your favorite from the start.”

He leans on the side of the chair, allowing his regular frame to be tilted in the position he usually reserves for customers. He knows all the best tactics – when you don’t want to talk, make them talk.

“Since you’re so clever and everything, what color have _you_ settled on?”

Nora’s gaze softens in a rare wistful way. For how little she likes showing off her emotions, she doesn’t really bother to conceal them, either.

“It’s always been green,” she answers. “Not sure why, but I guess I can tell, at least part of it. It must be… how should I put it. The mixture.”

“The mixture?”

“Yes. It’s a mixture of two pure colors, so brilliant. You live in a rigid mindset, all split in laws and class, and when you get the picture you wouldn’t tell a mixture could look so good. And there it is, working perfectly. It’s an in-between… sort of like me. I guess.”

Bill does not need her to elaborate further. Sympathy may not be his cup of tea, but he can tell in which ways her life is difficult. He acts on it like they both expect him to.

“Nobody said you’re perfect,” he cackles.

“Says you,” she cackles back.

“But you know what? It works for me.”

**Blue**

When his charred dimension bends under his grasp, Bill has known the colour of fire for a long time.

He shares it. He loves it. Fire is his element, just like it was supposed to be. Even before he got the chance to even guess, the road was already paved for him to find – for him to get there, glowing yellow in an ocean of red.

His is the colour of how this world ends.

But the heat, companion to his unrestrained fury, does not last long. What is left in his heart when it’s all over is nothing like it. 

It feels like the void of space, but in free fall. Less than life, immobile atoms. A knot of cold energy at the core of his being, like the ice flats on frozen planets at the very end of the universe.

Despite the future of endless fun he looks forward to, even Bill cannot create heat from cinders. 

Then he rebuilds. He crafts ever different toys to destroy. Through it all, the knot never leaves him. And somewhere deep, as he redecorates the place one day, a chord whose actual motives he won’t recognize makes a choice for him.

He is in charge, after all. He makes the rules.

He decides that, to him, fire will forever glow blue.

_**Interlude - Grey scale** _

When he finds he has been locked up again, Bill tells himself even that must come to an end, and his rage will last longer. Despite his resolve, it doesn’t.

The day comes when he stops punching the barrier. He stops setting ablaze random spots of what used to be Flatland. He even gets tired of screaming at Time Baby, which he thought would never lose its allure.

As the eons pass, Bill slips further into the silence that lies between their parties. He goes back to the empty space, and the agonizing sound dimensions make whenever they are eaten up by theirs. He rules over this nightmare of broken pieces, tied to a hole in his memory he cannot quite place.

Slowly – very slowly – the world he painted anew goes back to black and white.

It is all it takes to make him seek outside help.

**Cyan**

Bill is aware he has a tendency to get along the weird ones. 

Sometimes he wonders if it was also part of the deal – a prank played by Time Baby, as a plus. The blinding pain wasn’t enough, it seems. Oh, he is gonna pay – in due time.

The upside is, he likes the weirdos. Occasionally difficult to handle, but worth all the fun. When you get to be in their bodies, well, that’s a whole new series of perks.

He doesn’t quite grasp all of her nonsense; what he is positive about that Khi R'hi loves the sky enough to tell him about it in her dreams. She shows him, innocently, how she connects the lights after sunset, and in which language she reads their warnings.

For all that babble, she is smart enough for her level of evolution. And then, truth be told, Bill likes the daytime colour of this atmosphere, too. A daring, feather-light blue, with its honest touch of green to turn it into a spectacle. It’s sort of like fireworks, he tells her.

Khi R’hi asks what fireworks are. He doesn’t bother explaining. He doesn’t bother wondering why he likes this colour, either.

She is banned from the village when he sets it on fire for her. Accidentally. She dies at the age of twenty-seven, alone, deemed insane and a traitor by most. 

When they close for good, her eyes are still fixed on the sky. Incomprehensible, her melancholy clings to Bill for a long while. 

**Magenta**

Thousands of years later, he cuts a wound in the same sky. 

The vibrant colour of summer gives way to the palette of infinity. The Third Dimension is his to paint, however he pleases.

He opens the eternal star, taking pride in the chain of lies he has spread throughout the centuries. It was all to get here – the words, the tones, the modulation of this song.

It is only fair for their entrance to reflect it in vision.

“So, what’s it gonna be?” Pyronica shrills, more excited than any human sprog he met in history. “What colour for the core of the portal?”

He makes up his mind fast. Magenta it is. The one that doesn’t  _actually_  exist – oh, the irony of physics.

“I’ll paint it after you,” he says. “Ladies first.”

“Oh, Bill,” Pyronica jokes, dipping her heel in the portal, first of all. “You flatterer.”

She thinks it’s a joke between friends. In many ways, it is. For his choice, however, Bill has other reasons he doesn’t voice.

No grey this time. No more colourless endings. This is how this dimension is freed – full red and blue, hot and ice, the extremes.

**Yellow**

The first thing of his to go is his favorite colour.

He burns blue, like he chose ages ago. Turns out custom flames do not make death any more fun. They still tug at his shape, melting his mind, and lines and hues slide further away the harder he tries.

But Bill is yellow, he wants to be yellow, he wants to _be_ , how can this be happening?

And just as the rainbow explodes within him, dragging him on the verge of insanity, he is caught in a whirlwind of things which don’t make sense –

– about how yellow is his colour, his favorite –

– about how he never got to say it, 

– never got to answer, answer _whom?_

– he never got to _ask._

Yellow went first. He follows, and goes out like a sun.

**Black**

Maybe it was meant to be like this anyway.

His mirrored image raves on, trapped within its own stone dream. Maybe this is the key rule of the universe – the one that can’t be escaped, even by pure energy.

Enveloped in the state he used to call death, half memory, half awareness, he tries to focus on what exactly is so bad about it. A moment later, he remembers he is blind. For who knows how long, he is stuck in a loop of useless tries. 

At its other end, the concept becomes clear. Time is no longer there. Or, to be more precise, it is _all_ there.

Where he is, things stop mattering because they are fused together. All colors fall to rest, united, in a single embrace. He has entered the universal black, the sum of all he ever grasped in one thousand existences. 

His consciousness, if so it can be called, floats through minds, dimensions and ages. He sees himself in the frame of an empty body, sides irregular, while a dark fire consumes what is left of it. He sees a line going down in higher flames, devoured objects, a desperate hope. He sees himself in all the shapes he dreamt of, extorted, wished for.

And he understands wishing for anything is pointless.

He gives in to the absence of feeling, once again. He curls up against a boundless stone prison.

Within the black, Bill Cipher dreams.


End file.
